Dominican Scholar Repository Passes Two Million Downloads Mark

Research by undergraduate and graduate students past and present has reached a major milestone at Dominican University of California this month.

According to Michael Pujals, Dominican’s Scholarly Communications Librarian, abstracts in Dominican Scholar – the University’s institutional repository of faculty authored papers and artwork, graduate master's theses, senior theses, podcasts, research posters, and conferences – have been now downloaded more than two million times. Created by Pujals, Dominican Scholar collects, preserves, and shares research by both students and faculty. Its intent is to give back to the community at large while at the same time maximizing the University's visibility and reach, making Dominican research easily accessible to 225 countries.

“Dominican Scholar went live in September 2014, and we had our millionth download occur in the spring of 2020. We’ve now doubled that but in half the time,” Pujals says. “Our faculty and student publications have been downloaded, at no cost, in 228 countries and territories. With 25 percent of those going to developing countries it demonstrates Dominican's commitment to education and social justice on a global scale.”

Pujals notes that Dominican students are creating new scholarship all the time, including at the recent Scholarly and Creative Works Conference on campus. He says that under the old model, that work would end up in an instructor's office, or on a shelf in the library, and very few people, if any, would see it. Now with Dominican Scholar, students are contributing their work, for free, to a world-wide audience, and hopefully in the process making small improvements in people's lives.

The most cited paper in Dominican Scholar – Mutations in the P. falciparum Digestive Vacuole Transmembrane Protein PfCRT and Evidence for Their Role in Chloroquine Resistance – is co-authored by science professor Dr. Roland Cooper and the most social media mentions belong to Hospitality as Justice: Christian Approaches To Homelessness, a recorded lecture by philosophy professor Laura Stivers that has received almost 50,000 shares, likes and comments on Facebook.

Currently, here are the top five most downloaded abstracts on Dominican Scholar:

• The Marginalization and Stereotyping of Asians in American Film - 92,990 by Isabel Paner ’18, who majored in Communications and Media Studies and minored in Graphic Design. She is now a graphic designer in Belgium.
• The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on College Students - 84,946, by Nursing majors Natalie Guadiana ’21 and Taylor Okashima ’21.
• Impact of Reading Ability on Academic Performance at the Primary Level - 74,015, by Caleb Bartholet Cimminyotti ’13, who earned her MS degree in Education and is now principal of Redwood Academy of Ukiah.
• The Inclusion of Students with Special Needs in the General Education Classroom – 60,443, Megan Walsh ’18, who wrote her senior thesis as an Education major.
• Analysis of Pre Test and Post Test Performance of Students in a Learning Center Model at the Elementary School Level - 57,963, Marion Schalich ’15, who earned her MS in Education.